The White Wizard and the Grey Lady
by sunshine and lollipops
Summary: The flowers around Isengard are wilting and Anathia, daughter of Rohan, is a long way from home. Saruman, the White Wizard and once her mentor, is falling into madness. Once a place of beauty, the Orthanc has become her prison.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer/Author's Note: Any and all recognizable characters from LOTR that appear in this fan fiction have been shamelessly borrowed. Familiar scenes will be adapted from both the books and, where appropriate, in the spirit of the movie. Anathia is a character of my own creation. Time permitting, I will be doing a two part series on this character. The first part (**_**The White Wizard and the Grey Lady**_**) follows Anathia from **_**The Fellowship of the Ring**_** until the destruction of Isengard. Part two (**_**The Grey Lady and the Horse King**_**) should take us through the end of the series. **

_**The White Wizard and the Grey Lady**_

**I.**

In the black tower, Anathia closed her eyes.

Silence. Like a calm before a storm, before the sky turns grey as cinders, before the clouds break and pour their wrath upon a dusty and parched earth. Her unlined hands and delicate fingers too, customarily moving, over a bit of cloth, over a piece of fruit, over lines on a page, stilled. But then she heard it, deep in her head, growing louder in her ears, the sound of hooves against the plains. Low in the distance, like thunder, but there was no mistaking it. A horse and rider riding fast to Isengard.

_Shadowfax?_ The snow white flanks of the _Mearh_ horse took shape in her mind's eye. How long since she had seen that stallion in the flesh? Or its rider? She could not answer her own questions with any clarity and opened her eyes. And there stood Saruman, watching her intently from the doorway. She hadn't heard him come down the hallway, had not felt his presence. Her mind had been too far away and she too clumsy in letting it wander. The expression on her face must have given her away or perhaps the White Wizard could slip into her mind without invitation now.

"For one once so talented, Anathia, you have fallen far. From unimaginable heights. Your mind wanders and I hear it doing so," he spoke deliberately, with an edge of malice and ridicule behind his words, as if she were a novice once more. He steeled his expression.

Anathia felt a burning sensation near her eyes, on the sides of her head, and unbidden, salt water momentarily blinded her vision. And she could think of nothing but green hills, and gilded chambers and grass rolling in westward winds. A solitary hemlock tree stood outside the city walls on the side of a hill. Two little girls, twins, in matching green dresses with black trim, sat beneath the hemlock tree. The first, Anathia's sister Elfhild, held a doll with button eyes and yellow hair, the color of wheat fields at harvest. The other, Anathia herself, grasped a bouquet of white flowers in her fist. Symbelmynë. The white flowers that grew on the graves of their forefathers.

_Get out of my head!_

A small sound escaped Anathia's lips, the short intake of breath, but she said nothing and did not let her eyes sway from Saruman's, even as two lonely tears marched down the sides of her face. He tipped his head slowly, mocked, "Be careful, my dear. Soon you won't have any secrets left."

The White Wizard turned and walked from her private chambers. Anathia covered her mouth with her hand and for a moment more contemplated absolute silence. But the thunderous sounds in her head would not stop. Indeed, Shadowfax crossed the plains to Isengard. Disgusted by her weakness, she brushed her fingers across her lips, as if wiping a bad taste from her mouth.

_Father of my fathers_…she rose and walked to the window, looked down upon the steps leading up to the Orthanc. _Save me from myself_.


	2. Chapter 2

**II.**

Three hours after Anathia first heard him approaching, Gandalf passed the outer gate on Shadowfax. The White Wizard walked down the steps to meet him. His long, white hair and outer garment twirled in evening breezes.

"Smoke rises from the mountain of doom. The hour grows late, and Gandalf the Grey rides to Isengard seeking my counsel," Saruman leaned on his staff. "For that is why you have come, is it not, my old friend?"

"Saruman," answered Gandalf, in greeting. He smiled, at ease in the realm of Isengard, and after dismounting from his horse, walked up the steps to embrace his teacher, mentor and comrade in their vanishing race.

Gandalf felt eyes upon him and looking up, he glimpsed a fair-haired woman at a high window, nearly hidden by heavy drapes. He could not tell what her gaze fell upon, if she looked down, or elsewhere, towards the darkening horizon. Gandalf the Grey frowned briefly and looked up once more as Saruman led him into Orthanc.


	3. Chapter 3

_**III.**_

"My lady?" The youngest maid knocked on the door tentatively. Two others hovered near, inclined towards the heavy oak, listening for footsteps or any sound of movement on the other side. Anathia had not come out of her room for a day and a half. The servants who still lived in the tower (_The few that remain_, Anathia thought bitterly) found her behavior unsettling and attempted to draw the enchantress out. Thus far, they had failed miserably.

"My lady, won't you eat something?" The youngest one asked. Her voice barely rose above a whisper. She knocked again. "We've brought a tray from the kitchen. Please, my lady?" This plea, like the others before, was met with absolute silence.

The servant girls despaired. They liked Anathia; they trusted her more than Saruman. She was less imposing and had a sweeter temperament…although, even at her happiest, melancholia clung to her like moths to flame or flies to honey. Ever the Grey Lady of the tower. But she never failed to greet the chambermaids on the stairs or thank the cook after dinner. Besides, her origins were not nearly as obscure as Saruman. Nor her magic as inscrutable. She dealt in earth and enchantments. Fields around Isengard flourished, the flowers in its gardens bloomed with abandon. Her dealings with nearby villages (as of these three servant girls) favored the least fortunate and they loved the woman for it.

"Maybe she's weaving spells?" One of the other girls, her brown, chestnut hair pulled back in a simple kerchief, wondered this aloud. The last, a tall, bright-eyed chamber maid nodded, hopefully. Perhaps she was too focused, too intent to answer. The youngest maid shrugged but whispered that Anathia had not conjured even a single rose petal or blade of grass in weeks. Ever since Saruman started spending most of his days in the locked room upstairs, with the raised dais and the covered glass orb.

The door suddenly and abruptly opened, causing one of the girls gathered outside it to lose her balance and fall to the floor, sprawled at Anathia's feet. The woman seemed not to notice. Her complexion was pale and her long, honey-colored hair fell down around her shoulders, unpinned and wild like. She strode past all three girls without a single word.


	4. Chapter 4

_**IV.**_

_If he stays here any longer, he won't leave at all_. Anathia rushed down the stairs of the black tower, her steps guided by the insistent voice in her head. Gandalf and Saruman walked in her gardens. She could feel their footsteps, the soft bending of her summer grass. She could hear the buzzing of insects and the rustling of wind. She could see the stark blueness of the sky above them. She could taste Saruman's fingers on her lilies, smooth white dust slipping from their petals as he pulled his hands away.

Middle-Earth hummed. She heard humming in its quiet, mossy forests and through its craggy, snow-capped mountain ranges. She felt the vibrations in its thickly entwined briar thickets and deep in the oil-black mud of its riverbanks. Yes, Middle-Earth hummed. She felt closer to the land than she had in some time. Saruman, its whitened father and staunch defender, was about to switch sides. Gandalf, she knew, would be his tipping point.

Anathia grimaced.

The tingling in her fingertips brought little salve to her soul. If Saruman's grip on her was slipping, it was only because he was distracted. And weakened, she could do little more than restore a bloom to wilting petals or enchant a sparrow…she knew that without trying. Gone were the days of conjuring grain in fallow fields and tilting the wind favorably. Once, years before, she had stood with Saruman at the top of the tower and brought down rain showers when the Angren ran dry for too many seasons. Now she would be hard pressed to stir water in a glass.

_The hum of the earth is the clay of enchantment._ The White Wizard's lessons from twenty years before came back now. _Don't fight against it. Let it flow through you. We are the hands on the potter's wheel._

_Oh, but my hands are broken_. Anathia cried in her head, as her feet fell faster against the stone steps. _And yours are covered in blood._


	5. Chapter 5

_**V.**_

A heavy door scraped against stone, opening. It closed when Anathia reached the bottom of the staircase. Through the dark chambers of Orthanc came Gandalf and Saruman, speaking in somber tones, their voices echoing off the cold stone walls.

"…he cannot yet take physical form, but his spirit has lost none of its potency. Concealed within his fortress, the Lord of Mordor sees all-his gaze pierces cloud, shadow, earth and flesh. You know of what I speak, Gandalf-a great Eye…lidless…wreathed in flame," Saruman spoke his words solemnly, but Anathia heard the reverence Gandalf was blind to.

"Over the plains, against the wind, fire and paling sunlight," she whispered to herself, almost unconsciously. She shook her head against the fog that overwhelmed her senses. She must tread carefully now, it would do no good to reach into Gandalf's mind. She was too clumsy with impressions and Saruman would see through any feint she might try. _Father of my fathers, help me…_

"He is gathering all evil to him," Saruman continued. "Very soon he will summon an army great enough to launch an assault upon Middle Earth." He lit the candle on the wall as he passed. Anathia stepped back into the shadows on quiet footsteps.

"You know this?" Gandalf demanded, his lined face shocked and disbelieving. "How?"

"I have seen it," Saruman answered simply, the corners of his mouth rising ever so slightly. Anathia shuddered without volition. The movement in the shadows caught Gandalf's eye and he looked past Saruman, at the woman in the shadows. Saruman turned with narrow eyes.

"Anathia?" Gandalf blinked in recognition. As she stepped out of the shadows, Gandalf met the woman's gaze evenly. Now that he saw her, unhindered by those drapes, he saw a woman unchanged in the last twenty-five years. Her unlined face, her fair colored hair, dark, fathomless eyes, all the same as they had been when she was still a young woman, the younger of two talented sisters, playing magic at the court of their king, the horse master, Thengel. "I did not know you were in Isengard, my dear."

When there was no reply, he continued, "It's been some time."

"Time flies like a stormcrow," she whispered, almost breathless, her face pained and veiled by things unseen. That now familiar burning sensation was assailing her temples and it was all she could do to remain standing.

Gandalf was unnerved by her words. This was the name she'd given him when she was a child, weaving enchantments as easy as weaving garments. As she grew older, beautiful, clever, charming, this name "stormcrow" fell off her full lips as a term of endearment, much as a niece would tease a favorite uncle. But not now. This was not Anathia as she had been. The clever enchantress who loved horses more than magic, who filled the halls of Rohan with life and laughter. That all changed when her sister married Theoden, of course. Gandalf briefly wondered how long it had been since she was home. And what was she doing in Isengard?

"Gandalf?" Saruman motioned him further towards the inner chambers of the Orthanc, to the black room with the raised dais, the seeing stone upon it. Gandalf gave a parting glance to Anathia, who could do nothing but raise a limp hand as he followed Saruman down the corridor.

Once out of sight, Saruman released his grip on her and she fell to her knees, overcome.


	6. Chapter 6

_**VI.**_

"The White Wizard requests your presence at dinner, my lady." The timid maidservant in the arched doorway spoke these words quietly, as Anathia sat near her east side window, hands folded demurely in her lap, motionless as a marble statue. The girl hesitated to disturb her, even though her door had been unlocked and open for the first time in days. Gone were the tears from yesterday, dried up as if they'd never been shed. Now dry-eyed and unnaturally silent, Anathia stared at storm clouds gathering over the distant horizon, across the rolling green hills of her native land and further, to the black gates of Mordor.

"My lady?" The girl said again. This time Anathia cut a brief glance to her right, to show the girl that she'd heard her. The servant girl retreated from the room and down the hall quickly, on soft shoed footsteps, her task finished and others to attend to. Anathia remained at the window for a few minutes more before rising and walking down to the dining hall.

In a high-backed oak chair, at the head of a table with room for twenty, Saruman sat in solitude and sinister darkness. Two thick and half-burned candles offered little light in the large chamber and cast dim shadows on the vaulted ceiling. Cream colored wax solidified slowly as it rolled down the cylindrical sides and dripped onto mounted brass plates.

Anathia pulled out the chair at the other end. The chair scraped against the cold stone floor and she sat down heavily, her shadowed eyes ever on Sarumon's ancient, deeply lined face. The White Wizard watched her forced composure and deliberate movements. He clucked over her silence with a cruel sneer.

"Anathia, you needn't be this way," he chided simply, breaking off a piece of hard-crusted bread from the wrapped loaf set beside him. A fresh-faced kitchen maid appeared at Anathia's elbow with a steaming plate in hand. Seasoned venison and roasted vegetables flavored the air, but Anathia waved the woman off.

"Thank you, I'm not hungry," she muttered. The kitchen maid pressed her, concerned by the enchantress's ongoing lack of appetite. She could bring something else if this didn't suit? Or perhaps a drink for now and the meal later? Stretched thin and only superficially composed, Anathia snapped at the girl, "I said I didn't want it!"

"Temper, temper, dear," Saruman teased from the opposite end. Anathia turned from the cowering kitchen maid and regarded her master fully.

"Did you kill him?" she asked plainly, her tone dangerously low. The question was too direct and Saruman's light-hearted manner dissipated too quickly. He shooed the maid away and after a lengthy pause, answered calmly and at his pleasure.

"Why would I kill him?" he replied, taking a long drink from his wine glass. The dark red liquid sloshed like blood in a bowl when he set it down on the ornately carved table once more. "He's on top of the tower…until he sees reason."

"There's no reason in Isengard, my lord. You've made sure of that."

"Come, Anathia. Reason changes with the incoming and outgoing tide. How many times have I said this to you? You are young and foolish sometimes. But your old stormcrow will come to his senses."

"He won't. He'll die first," she stated flatly, raising her chin, adding valiantly, "As will I."

Saruman laughed at her. "Oh Anathia, your spark has returned! After twenty-five years too. Glad to see it. Though a little late in coming."

"You're a madman!" His sarcasm fueled her frenzied reply.

"A madman, lady, does not fight a battle he can't win." Saruman turned deadly serious and nearly reverent. "That which rises in Mordor will not be defeated."

"Certainly not if you intend to aid his second coming!" she cried in a fevered pitch, her voice echoing loudly off the stone in the near empty chamber. She breathed heavily and lowering her head, she brought her fingertips to her eyelids to calm herself. An old fire was resurfacing, a tightening in her chest had started and her palms burned in anticipation.

_Please not this. Never this. Oh father of my fathers! _Something dark and ugly twisted inside her head, a magic far less developed than her feather-light, sunshine-happy earth bound enchantments, far more powerful, far more dangerous. She had no control over this…this black spot on her soul. And a long time ago, after a funeral procession in the stark mid-winter that came too early and too unnaturally, she had sworn never again to entertain its presence. With great effort, she repressed the raging sounds in her head and her fingers cooled against her trembling skin.

"Are you finished?" the White Wizard's flippant remark roused no further answer from the lady at the other end of his table, she too intent on thoughts of green hills, white shores, calm seas of late autumn fields. The warmth and smell of cut grass as she ducked into a hay strewn stable. A young king's gentle touch on her bare forearm and his robust, unguarded laughter as he followed her in.

Saruman sat back with a heavy sigh and folded his hands before him. "I admire your fortitude in keeping your emotions controlled. But I hope you don't make this effort on my account, Anathia. Your subconscious ability to curse those who wrong you may be powerful indeed, but I'm no scheming twin who tricked her way into your unobservant lover's embrace. Please remember that."

"I would never have harmed a hair on my sister's head…" Anathia whispered, more to herself than to Saruman. Tears pooled in her eyes again unbidden, tears of hideous remorse, too familiar. She didn't bother to brush them away. This was an old wound and one Saruman took pleasure in forcing salt across.

"Yes, but the woman died, didn't she? The young, vibrant wife of Théoden dead in childbirth after you raised a curse to your lips…and you dare to judge me, lady, with this blood on your hands?"

Regret tainted each word and she could manage little more than, "I didn't know what I was saying…," each word forced through trembling lips.

"You were delirious and overwhelmed with fever. Yes, I know." Saruman's tone held no pity, cruelly recounting, each word an iron weight pressed upon her soul. "And the king of Rohan neglected his wife in favor of prayerful vigils at _your_ bedside. Gandalf was summoned and you were brought back from the brink…even as your sister descended into its dark folds, leaving Théoden's child behind. Untouched, unspoiled. And there's an end to it."

At the mention of the man lying beaten and bruised far above them, Anathia hardened noticeably and in righteous anger, she forced painful memories from her head, ignoring his final words bravely. Through blinding tears, she rose and struggled to keep her voice steady.

"I won't listen to any more of this," she stated, without any strength of conviction. Yet, her feet led her away from him purposefully, with even steps against that cold, stone floor. Saruman narrowed his dark, intelligent eyes as he watched her go.

"Be grateful you have a forgiving benefactor, Anathia!" Saruman called after her retreating form, breaking another piece of bread from the loaf on the table and downing the rest of his wine in one swallow.


	7. Chapter 7

_**VII.**_

"My lady?" Another small, yellow-haired, bright-eyed chambermaid hovered in a doorway, peeking through with trepidation. She spoke quietly in the face of apparent madness. Anathia emptied the cupboards in the apothecary's room in the west tower, breaking bottles and disturbing powders in her manic searching. Gareth, the apothecary, would just have to forgive her, she thought. She had no other choice and she was running out of time.

"My lady, can I help you find something?" the maid spoke tentatively in no more than a whisper.

"If nothing is lost, how can it be found? If the sky tumbles low, is it not the ground?" Anathia muttered nonsense and bit her tongue when tempted to scream obscenities at the girl. Couldn't she see there was no use? Anathia stretched up to an upper cupboard and knocked two blue bottles out of her way in reaching further behind. The sound of one crash followed another and the servant girl jumped at both.

"There!" Anathia cried in triumph, a cordial bottle filled with brown dust exposed and in her hands. She turned to the chambermaid, a crazed smile on her lips and beckoned her near, "Come, Lily, I need you now."

The girl eased out from behind the doorway hesitantly.

"Hurry!" Anathia snapped. Lily nodded her head violently and hopped to her mistress's side, the loose ends of her yellow curls bouncing freely. "Now hold out your hands. Quickly!"

The girl did as she was asked. And into her hands, Anathia poured half of the contents of the bottle.

"Well, this is just dirt, my lady!" the girl exclaimed as the dusty soil fell into her hands.

"Aye, it is," Anathia replied calmly, spitting the next words bitterly, "Good earth. The true dust of Middle Earth, blights and all."

With both her hands covered in dirt, Lily looked up at the enchantress, wide-eyed and expectant.

"Now you will run to the riverside, down in the forest, where it comes near the old stone walls and you will cast this dirt into the water, do you understand?"

"Yes. But why—"

"Do it, Lily! Run!"


End file.
